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Michael Shermer

The Michael Shermer Show is a series of long-form conversations between Dr. Michael Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer sits down with economist and Franklin descendant Dr. Mark Skousen to explore the wit, wisdom, and modern relevance of Benjamin Franklin, the man who bridged science, politics, and philosophy like no other. Shermer and Skousen discuss Franklin’s contributions to science, moral philosophy, economics, and religious thought, while asking: What would Franklin make of today’s America—its economy, politics, and culture?
 
Mark Skousen holds the Doti-Spogli Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University. Known as “America’s Economist,” he is the editor of Forecasts & Strategies, an award winning investment newsletter, and producer of FreedomFest, “the world’s largest gathering of free minds.” He is the author of over 25 books, incl. his latest, The Greatest American: Benjamin Franklin, The World’s Most Versatile Genius.

Was Benjamin Franklin America’s First Scientist?

The COVID-19 pandemic was a devastating global event, killing more than seven million people, straining the fabric of societies, and shaking the foundations of the world economy. And yet, as horrifying as the experience was, COVID-19 was not “The Big One” — the dreaded pandemic that haunts the nightmares of epidemiologists and public health officials everywhere. That far deadlier outbreak is still ahead of us, and it will reshape life across the planet unless we’re ready for it.
 
In this episode, Dr. Michael Osterholm, one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts, explains what we got wrong, what we got right, and what it all reveals about our preparedness for the next great pandemic.
 
Michael Osterholm is Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health at the University of Minnesota, where he founded and directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP). An internationally renowned epidemiologist with fifty years of experience, he's led major outbreak investigations worldwide and authored over 350 papers. He served as a U.S. State Department science envoy from 2017-2019. His new book is The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.

COVID-19: What We Learned (and Didn’t) About Masks, Lockdowns, and Vaccines

Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It’s also necessary for social coordination. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech.
 
But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.
 
Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date.
 
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books. His new book is When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

The Power of Common Knowledge: Steven Pinker on Language, Norms, and Punishment

Jim Lampley’s story is a 50-year travelog of an unlikely career that catalogs the evolution of sports television—from his emergence as the first sideline reporter, through hosting and covering 14 Olympics, to working with all major sports networks.
 
In this episode, Lampley reflects on his experiences in boxing, the evolution of the sport, and the genius of athletes like Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The conversation also explores the unpredictability of life and how chance events shape our paths, the importance of mentorship, and the impact of performance-enhancing drugs.
 
Lampley offers insights into the current state of journalism, emphasizing the importance of truth and objectivity amidst the challenges posed by social media and economic incentives. He also reflects on the complex legacy of O.J. Simpson and shares anecdotes about some of his other friends, including the beloved actor (and avid golfer) Jack Nicholson.
 
Jim Lampley is a Hall of Fame sportscaster with 50 years of on-site experience at numerous live sports events, including the Super Bowl, Wimbledon, and 14 Olympics. For 30 years, he was the face and voice of HBO World Championship Boxing, calling some of the sport’s most iconic fights—including bouts featuring Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, and Floyd Mayweather. A three-time Emmy winner and International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, his new book is It Happened!

Jim Lampley on Hosting the Super Bowl, Calling Tyson’s Fights, and His Friendship with O.J.

In this solo commentary, Michael Shermer reflects on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and places it in the larger context of political violence, the psychology of radicalization, the dangers of false beliefs, and the role of free speech in intellectual discourse.

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk: Shermer Reflects on Political Violence

Science writer Nicholas Wade explains how human nature continues to shape—and sometimes destabilize—modern civilization, and argues that ignoring the effects of human nature on politics is one of society’s greatest mistakes.
 
Drawing on anthropology, evolutionary biology, and history, Wade shows how deep-rooted traits not only shape the outcomes of certain political beliefs and systems, but also affect how people form families, religion, and social order.
 
Nicholas Wade has worked at Nature and Science, and, for many years, at The New York Times, where he was an editorial writer and science editor. He is the author of four books about recent human evolution. His latest is The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations.

The Fate of Nations: Why Ignoring Human Nature Dooms Politics

Parenting today often feels like an uphill battle, with technology invading every corner of our kids’ lives. From the rise of social media addiction to the growing mental health crisis among children and teens, parents are grappling with how they can create a healthy, balanced relationship with technology for their kids.
 
Drawing on her decades as a psychologist studying the impact of technology and mental health, Jean Twenge offers evidence-based advice for raising independent and well-rounded children.
 
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of more than 190 scientific publications and several books based on her research, including Generation Me, iGen, and Generations, which we discussed on this show. Her research has been covered in Time, The Atlantic, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. She has also been featured on Today, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, CBS This Morning, Real Time with Bill Maher, and NPR. Her new book is Ten Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World.

How to Protect Children from Social Media and AI

In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer interviews Alan Stern, a prominent planetary scientist and astronaut. Stern discusses his recent suborbital flight, the differences between government and private space initiatives, and the scientific implications of UFO sightings. He also shares insights about the evolution and future of space exploration, including details about the rarely talked about upcoming termination of dozens of already paid-for NASA missions.
 
Alan Stern is a planetary scientist, astronaut, and author. NASA has selected him to be the first researcher NASA funded to fly to space as a crewmember aboard a commercial suborbital space mission. Since 2001 he has led NASA’s $900M New Horizons mission that explored the Pluto system and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt—the farthest exploration of worlds in history. In 2007 and 2008, Dr. Stern served as NASA’s chief of all space and Earth science programs, directing its $5B/year Science Mission Directorate (SMD), with 93 separate flight missions and a program of over 3,000 research grants. In 2022, he took part in a deep-sea expedition to explore the RMS Titanic in a submersible.

The Future of Space Exploration Amid NASA Mission Shutdowns

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children.
 
Beekman reveals the “happy accidents” hidden in our molecular biology—DNA, chromosomes, and proteins—that led to one of the most fateful events in the history of life on Earth: our giving birth to babies earlier in their development than our hominid cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Faced with highly dependent infants requiring years of nurturing and protection, early human communities needed to cooperate and coordinate, and it was this unprecedented need for communication that triggered the creation of human language—and changed everything.
 
Madeleine Beekman is professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her new book is The Origin of Language.

Why Do Humans Speak?

Economist Dean Spears explains the forces driving global population change, from past fears of overpopulation to today’s concerns about declining birth rates.
 
He contrasts the perspectives of biologists and economists on population growth and highlights the role of human ideas and innovation in sustaining progress. Spears also discusses misconceptions about zero-sum economics, the links between population, health, and economic well-being, and the rise of anti-natalism.
 
The conversation covers population size and environmental concerns, government policies on family planning, and why cultural attitudes toward reproduction may be as important as policy in addressing the challenges of a shrinking population.
 
Dean Spears is an economist, demographer, and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Spears is a founding executive director of r.i.c.e, (a research institute for compassionate economics), a nonprofit that works to promote children’s health, growth, and survival in rural India. Together with Michael Geruso, he is the author of the new book After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People.

Depopulation: The Silent Global Emergency

Why do ordinary people carry out extraordinary harm when simply told to do so? From the Holocaust to the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia, history shows how obedience to authority can lead to unimaginable acts. But what’s happening in the brain when we follow orders—even ones that conflict with our morals?
 
In this episode, we speak with neuroscientist Emilie Caspar, whose groundbreaking research explores how authority influences cognition and behavior. Drawing from real-life accounts of genocide perpetrators and cutting-edge neuroscience, Caspar reveals how obedience can short-circuit independent decision-making—often without us realizing it.
 
Emilie Caspar is a professor at Ghent University, Belgium, where she leads the Moral and Social Brain Lab. She specializes in social neuroscience. Her main research areas focus on obedience and how restricting one’s autonomy and choice options impacts the brain. Her new book is Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience.

Why We Follow Orders: The Neuroscience of Compliance and Control

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